The Critics Are Wrong. The Master Is Easy to Watch.

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I've already given my opinion of Paul Thomas Anderson's The Masterhere, but as it prepares to open in more theaters across the country, I've been following the critical response of others with deepening fascination. Has there ever been a film that has so confused American reviewers? Nobody can quite manage to give either full-throated love or full-throated hate. Even Rex Reed, over at The New York Observer, accidentally compliments the film by revealing his own taste:

I will also refrain from labeling The Master "the worst movie I've ever seen!" because like the proverbial boy who cried wolf, I've blurted that cry of despair so many times, who would believe me? It might not even be the worst movie ever made, depending on how you feel about such hollow, juvenile, and superficial trash as I ♥ Huckabees, Brewster McCloud, Punch-Drunk Love, Mulholland Drive, The Royal Tenenbaums, Lost Highway, Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses, and ... well, as they said in Hollywood during the McCarthy witch hunts, "the list goes on."

This is of course self-parody of the highest order. I find it hard to imagine a filmmaker alive who wouldn't rather be on that list than off. More confounding was the review by David Thomson in The New Republic, which begins with the great line "Well, at least it's pretentious," and which goes on to compare Joaquin Phoenix's performance to Brando, then manages to turn that into an insult. Near the end, Thomson gives one of the strangest analyses I've ever read in a review: "So I am of the opinion that Paul Thomas Anderson has made a dud. There's no harm in that after five remarkable films in a row. And I may prove to be wrong if enough people say so."

But it's not just the negative and semi-negative reviews that are confounding. A.O. Scott at The New York Times obviously felt, as I did, that The Master is a masterpiece, and yet his description amounts almost to a backhanded compliment. The last paragraph:

All of this striving — absurd, tragic, grotesque, and beautiful — can feel like too much. The Master is wild and enormous, its scale almost commensurate with Lancaster Dodd's hubris and its soul nearly as restless as Freddie Quell's. It is a movie about the lure and folly of greatness that comes as close as anything I've seen recently to being a great movie. There will be skeptics, but the cult is already forming. Count me in.

So it appears that seeing The Master involves becoming part of a cult. Over at the Awl, there's a pretty decent discussion of whether to join in. And it's a question that returns in review after review, the consensus being that you either need to be super-smart and super-dedicated to enjoy The Master, or at least you need to pretend to be.

But I think this is all overly cute, writerly bullshit. Journalists erroneously conflating the subject of a movie with the viewer's experience because it makes for a better editorial arc in their reviews. In fact, I think the brilliance of the film is how superficial it is. It is a movie made for everyone. The human cult. The gorgeous cinematography, the hilarious photo shoots that run through the film, the loving attention to period detail and haircuts and songs — Anderson has made an intensely materialistic film about spiritual life. I think part of what is so confusing about the film is just how little depth it has. These men who pretend to be gods are, in reality, intensely earthy. One joins a cult. One leads a cult. They meet. They change each other. They separate. Not exactly Charlie Kaufman or Last Year at Marienbad. It's a very profound film. It resonates for days. But it's been built to be watched. It's easy to watch.